The best Canadian books of 2024
CBC Books has rounded up all our best books of 2024 lists in one handy place! Check out the top Canadian fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics and kids books of the year.
Fiction
Our top pick: What I Know About You by Éric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss
In What I Know About You, Tarek is on the right path: he'll be a doctor like his father, marry and have children. But when he falls for his patient's son, Ali, his life is turned upside-down as he realizes his sexuality against a backdrop of political turmoil in 1960s Cairo. In the 2000s, Tarek is now a doctor in Montreal. When someone begins to write to him and about him, the past that he's been trying to forget comes back to haunt him.
What I Know About You was on the shortlists for the 2024 Giller Prize and the 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Chacour is a Montreal-based writer who was born to Egyptian parents and grew up between France and Quebec. In addition to writing, he works in the financial sector. What I Know About You is his first book and was a bestseller in its French edition, winning many awards including the Prix Femina.
Strauss has translated 12 works of fiction, several graphic novels and one screenplay. He was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, Synapses and The Longest Year. His translation of Le plongeur by Stephane Larue called The Dishwasher won the 2020 Amazon First Novel Award. He lives in Quebec City.
Nonfiction
Our top pick: The Knowing by Tanya Talaga
Annie Carpenter's life was upended by colonialism, the Indian Act and the residential school system. For 80 years, her family tried to find out what happened to her. Now, journalist and filmmaker Tanya Talaga is telling her great-great grandmother's story in her new book and documentary series, The Knowing.
Talaga is also the author of Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City, which won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult Award. Her book, All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward, was the basis for the 2018 CBC Massey Lectures.
Comics
Our top pick: Degrees of Separation by Alison McCreesh
Degrees of Separation blends stories, drawings and sketches that chronicle Alison McCreesh's decade spent living in the North. From being stranded in the High Arctic to raising a baby in a small shack with no running water, the book is a coming-of-age story that recounts the challenges and joys of life living and working north of the 60th parallel.
McCreesh is an artist who currently lives in Yellowknife. She has travelled around the Arctic and sub-Arctic and the theme of contemporary day-to-day life in the North carries through her creative work.
LISTEN | Alison McCreesh on the magic of the North:
Poetry
Our top pick: Scientific Marvel by Chimwemwe Undi
Scientific Marvel is a poetry collection that looks into the history of and current life in Winnipeg. With humour and surprise, it delves into deeper themes of racism, queerness and colonialism while keeping personal lived experiences close to the page.
Scientific Marvel won the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Chimwemwe Undi is a Winnipeg-based poet, editor and lawyer. She was the Winnipeg poet laureate for 2023 and 2024. She won the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards and her work can be found in Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature and BBC World. Undi was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.
Kids
Our top pick: Still My Tessa by Sylv Chiang, illustrated by Mathias Ball
Still My Tessa is a book about practicing with pronouns and accepting people for who they are. Evelyn is worried about Tessa — they don't want to play the same games they used to play together anymore. Determined to find new ways to connect with her older sibling, she learns to see Tessa as a non-binary person by practicing using new pronouns for them.
Still My Tessa won the 2024 edition of CBC Kids Reads. It was championed by Gary the Unicorn during the second edition of 'Canada Reads for kids.'
Still My Tessa is for ages 3 to 8 and is out now.
Sylv Chiang is a teacher and a children's book author. She also wrote the middle-grade series, Cross Ups, which includes the books Rising Star, Anyone's Game and Tournament Trouble. Still My Tessa is Chiang's first picture book. She grew up in Toronto and now lives in Pickering, Ont.
Mathias Ball is a trans-identified illustrator from Goderich, Ont. Other picture books they've illustrated include Every Body Is a Rainbow by Caroline Carter and What If Bedtime Didn't Exist? by Francine Cunningham.
Middle grade/Young adult
Our top pick: The New Girl by Cassandra Cali
Inspired by artist Cassandra Calin's own immigration story, The New Girl is a middle-grade graphic novel about Lia and her family's move to Canada from Romania. Alongside all the complicated feelings Lia has about moving to somewhere completely different from home, when she arrives she experiences her first period. Now, as Lia navigates a new school with new classmates and new languages she is also faced with the daunting task of puberty.
Cassandra Calin is an artist and popular webtoon cartoonist who has amassed over 2.5 million followers on social media. She was born in Romania and now lives in Montreal. The New Girl is her debut graphic novel.
